I use three fonts/keyboards in my annotation: IPA, English and Abyssinica/ Amharic. IPA works fine, but Amharic yields square boxes, even though in the Unicode font finder explorer Abyssinica is listed and displays Amharic characters. How can i make amharic script work in ELAN?
Thanks, Anne
Just to be sure: did you set the font for the tier(s) containing Amharic characters?
And on what platform is this?
In principle it should be possible to use your Unicode fonts in ELAN (there are some issues with “advanced” rendering, but in general it should work).
A font finder or explorer might render characters using different fonts; maybe it is just a matter of setting the right font in ELAN.
-Han
Hi Han, thanks for your reply. I’m working in Windows 7 and ELAN 4.6.1.
The keyboard programmes are set to switch language with Estonia for Ethiopic keyboard and Afrikaans for IPA. (These settings are necessary in FLEx for automatic keyboard switching between languages.) My default keyboard is NL.
In ELAN my tx@IPA tier is set to Nederlands (system default) as default language and no font is specified but IPA characters are displayed on typing IPA keystrokes.
my ft@Amh tier is set the same way. When I type Ethiopic keystrokes, I get square boxes. When I set the Abyssinica font, nothing changes and i still get square boxes. Looking at the font settings again the box is empty as if i had not selected and changed to Abyssinica before. Also when I select none for default language i only get square boxes.
I’d really appreciate if you could help me to untangle the problem.
Anne
It is strange that a font that you set for a tier, is gone the next time you open
the window of the tier font. Normally I would say that the rendering of a font has nothing to do with the input method.
What happens if you copy text in ELAN that is shown with boxes and past it in a text editor (with the font set)?
Then the characters show up correctly.
So the problem is setting the font. Actually I tried and cannot change the font of any tier to any other font… I made a “tryfont” tier that has no parent but then also no other font can be set.
?
So, the question is why it doesn’t work to set the font of the tier. I have not heard of that before, I believe, at least not so generally, that not any font can be set for a tier.
You have to press Apply several times after selecting a font and the Change button of the main Change Tier Attributes. And then you should see the change.
-Han
(Apologies for the delay)
I reinstalled ELAN-Corpa and the problem remains. I installed ELAN 481 and the problem is gone. So i’ll use the latter from now on.
Thanks for your replies Han!
best, Anne
My apologies for re-opening this thread. I am experiencing a similar problem as Anne described above, and have not been able to find a solution. I am using two fonts - IPA and Nepali (SIL Annapurna). In the annotation mode, I can correctly get the font displayed for three of the four required tiers (two participants, one for the vernacular language written in Nepali, the other a Nepali translation). But for the last tier, the vernacular in Nepali for the second participant, I just can’t get it right, and keep getting square boxes. Any idea how to solve this? Thanks in advance, Tim.
Hi, that is really strange. Are you sure that the font setting for that last tier has correctly been applied and stored?
Maybe you can open the accompanying .pfsx file of that .eaf file in a text editor and search for a preference group with the key “TierFonts” ( key=“TierFonts” ) and verify that the entry for that second tier (the tier name is the key of a sub-element) is equal to the entry of the first tier?
If that is all correct I have no clue what could cause the difference.
-Han
Hi Han, apologies for late response. The problem is solved, but unfortunately, I no longer remember how! Sorry for that… When I remember or come across the same issue, I will make sure to take note! - Tim.
